Being space-wrecked and marooned is tough
enough. But to face the horrors of such a
planet as this was too much. Imagine Fawkes'
terrible predicament; plenty of food--and
twenty seven beautiful girls for companions.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Jonathan Fawkes opened his eyes. He was flat on his back, and a girl
was bending over him. He detected a frightened expression on the
girl's face. His pale blue eyes traveled upward beyond the girl. The
sky was his roof, yet he distinctly remembered going to sleep on his
bunk aboard the space ship.
"You're not dead?"
"I've some doubt about that," he replied dryly. He levered himself to
his elbows. The girl, he saw, had bright yellow hair. Her nose was
pert, tip-tilted. She had on a ragged blue frock and sandals.
"Is--is anything broken?" she asked.
"Don't know. Help me up." Between them he managed to struggle to his
feet. He winced. He said, "My name's Jonathan Fawkes. I'm a space pilot
with Universal. What happened? I feel like I'd been poured out of a
concrete mixer."
She pointed to the wreck of a small space freighter a dozen feet away.
Its nose was buried in the turf, folded back like an accordion. It
had burst open like a ripe watermelon. He was surprised that he had
survived at all. He scratched his head. "I was running from Mars to
Jupiter with a load of seed for the colonists."
"Oh!" said the girl, biting her lips. "Your co-pilot must be in the
wreckage."
He shook his head. "No," he reassured her. "I left him on Mars. He
had an attack of space sickness. I was all by myself; that was the
trouble. I'd stay at the controls as long as I could, then lock her on
her course and snatch a couple of hours' sleep. I can remember crawling
into my bunk. The next thing I knew you were bending over me." He
paused. "I guess the automatic deflectors slowed me up or I would have
been a cinder by this time," he said.
The girl didn't reply. She continued to watch him, a faint enigmatic
smile on her lips. Jonathan glanced away in embarrassment. He wished
that pretty women didn't upset him so. He said nervously, "Where am I?
I couldn't have slept all the way to Jupiter."
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
"I don't know."
"You don't know!" He almost forgot his self-consciousness in his
surprise. His pale blue eyes returned to the landscape. A mile across
the plain began a range of jagged foothills, which tossed upward
higher and higher until they merged with the blue saw-edge of a chain
of mountains. As he looked a puff of smoke belched from a truncated
cone-shaped peak. A volcano. Otherwise there was no sign of life: just
he and the strange yellow-headed girl alone in the center of that vast
rolling prairie.
"I was going to explain," he heard her say. "We think that we are on an
asteroid."
"We?" he looked back at her.
"Yes. There are twenty-seven of us. We were on our way to Jupiter, too,
only we were going to be wives for the colonists."
"I remember," he exclaimed. "Didn't the Jupiter Food-growers
Association enlist you girls to go to the colonies?"